“Contagious?”
“It’s only affecting certain people. All we know is it’s not airborne, waterborne, or contagious from person to person.”
“What people?”
“Adult males.”
She looked at the three men in the lander with her. “I’ll be right out.” She sat back. “Turn off the barrier, Aaron.” She climbed past him to the back of the lander and headed for the air lock. If the disease was only affecting men, she wouldn’t need a protective suit. The decon air lock would take care of making sure she couldn’t bring anything back inside the lander when she returned.
Aaron looked livid. “Now, you wait one fucking minute—”
She turned on him. “No, you wait. I’m a doctor. This is my job, Captain Lucio. You want me to get all regulation on you? A ranking DSMC fleet medical officer can override a captain’s orders when health and safety are at stake. I’m overriding you. You guys stay here until I find out what the hell is going on.”
Sam Johnson laughed. “She’s right, Aaron.”
Aaron frowned. “I don’t give a shit what the fucking regs say. I’m your husband, and you are not going out there alone!”
“I’m your medical officer. I say you’re not going out there, Captain!”
Stalemate.
Aaron glared at her. “How do you plan on keeping me here, Doctor?”
She looked at Sam and Gregor. “You got it under control?”
Gregor smirked and shook his head. “Oh, fuck no, you’re not dragging me into this, regs or not. I’m not a moron.”
Sam shook his head, too, although he looked amused.
Aaron’s eyes darkened. “She said it’s not airborne or contagious person-to-person. I’ll wear a protective suit.”
Emi wasn’t happy, but they were wasting time. “Fine. Get it on and hurry up.” She grabbed her medical kit and hand-held terminal.
He switched off the energy barrier and activated the decontamination air lock setting. Quickly donning a suit, he followed her out the air lock to the landing pad.
Governor Martinez led them from the landing pad to a nearby low, rambling office complex. Inside the lobby area, while tidy, the evidence of a violent attack still lingered. Wood covered one window. A long, winding crack crazed another. Gouges and burn marks scarred one wall.
This close, Emi could see and feel the wear, fatigue, and fear in the woman. She reached out and touched the governor’s arm. “Ma’am, what happened?”
That’s when Emi felt the other woman’s grief wash through her.
The governor burst into tears. “We don’t know! They just went crazy, but there’s no reason for it we can find!” She collapsed into a chair as Emi knelt in front of her. Fear now filled the governor’s emotions.
“What are the symptoms?”
“It’s all adult men, and not even all of them. They just started acting weird and having intermittent rages. We can’t predict it. We’ve had to sedate them and keep them that way.” Tears rolled down her face.
“Can I speak to your head doctor?”
That’s when what little was left of the governor’s composure shattered. She sobbed into her hands. “My husband, Sascha. He was one of the first to come down with it.”
Chapter Eight
The transmitter, it turned out, had been damaged by the head communications engineer. He became ravaged by the disease as they broadcasted their distress call.
“We tried to fix it,” Ilse, as she’d insisted Emi and Aaron call her, said. “Then our head electrical engineer and two others who could have repaired it all came down with it.”
Aaron punched his com link. “Hey, Sam? There’s a portable telecom base in there somewhere. Can you put on a suit and bring it in here? Get it hooked up for them. Their transmitter’s toast, and their com staff isn’t…available.”
“Roger, Aaron. On my way.”
He looked at Ilse. “Where are you holding the men?”
“In the hospital. It’s overloaded now. We’re nearly out of supplies to keep them sedated.” She choked back another sob. “There’s no predicting the rages. They can be okay for hours or even days, then they try to kill anyone who comes near them.” She shook her head. “We don’t have a brig large enough to hold them all!”
“How many?” Emi asked.
“Thirty-eight.”
Emi’s eyes widened. Over ten percent of their entire population. “How many men are in your colony?”
Ilse went quiet. “There were one hundred and three.”
“Were?”
“Five have died because of this…whatever it is. Two died, killed in self-defense by their wives when the men went crazy. One was killed by another man who went into a rage. Two more died from wounds they received while raging.”
The revelation stunned Emi. Nearly forty percent of their men were infected.
Ilse continued. “Our veterinarian, Dr. Shourpa, she tried to figure it out. The best she could do was eliminate the obvious suspects. It’s not a bacteria or a virus, no biological agent or amoeba or anything like that. She couldn’t detect changes in their blood work from their pre-arrival results. She’s not a human doctor, there was only so much she could do.”
“And it’s only men, no women, no children?”
“The youngest infected is sixteen.”
Emi’s mind raced. “So who is in charge of research now? Of trying to figure it out?”
Ilse shook her head. “No one. There is no one with the knowledge or skill. Our other human doctor is also infected. The remaining med staff has its hands full trying to manage everyone and keep them alive. They’re using volunteers from other divisions to monitor vital signs, manage IV nutrition, and handle care. We’ve practically had to cease operations because we need our other staff for critical services, and some of them are doing double or triple duty to keep the colony running.”
“Take us to them.”
Sam appeared, wearing a protective suit. He carried the transmitter and a bag of tools. Aaron got him started before he followed Emi and Ilse from the building.
Emi didn’t miss how Aaron hung back and didn’t interfere with her job, although he kept one hand on the butt of the energy pistol strapped to the hip of his protective suit. She also didn’t miss how on edge he felt, hypervigilant to any potential threat to her.
Ilse talked as they walked across the compound. “I mean, if it was all the males, then I could understand that, and Dr. Shourpa would have a starting point to work from. But it’s not all the men. We haven’t been able to isolate a common factor that would lead us to a diagnosis. Keep in mind, we’ve been here for several years now. Nothing’s changed, there was nothing like an impact from a meteorite or something, nothing. Nothing has changed!”
Emi doubted that. What she suspected was a change they didn’t recognize, didn’t notice because they lived here.
But she wondered if she, a stranger to the planet, could find it.
To say the small medical complex was overcrowded would have been an understatement of Jupiter-sized proportions. Unconscious men were hooked to IV drips, many of which hung on makeshift poles. With only fifteen patient rooms, they had filled those as well as their emergency room triage area and all but one operating room. Dr. Cayce Shourpa looked overwhelmed and exhausted. When Emi shook hands with her, the woman’s deep despair washed through Emi.
“Thank the gods you’re here!” she cried, hugging Emi. “I just…” She broke down crying. “I don’t know what to do! I’ve done all I can!”